The eighteen-year-old young man will one day make a living as a shoemaker, but his greatest love is hang gliding, for which he is willing to sacrifice anything.
Petr, Martin and Čenda spent part of their youth in the war in the Beskydy Mountains. They were united by a common danger. Years later, when their personal lives are in crisis, on their trip to the Beskydy Mountains together, they reminisce about their youth...
A film about a young sanitation worker who tries to prevent the pollution of a river, but pays the price...
After many decades in Germany, Marie Hahn will come to Prague to meet her relatives and friends. She learns unflattering information about her husband's behaviour during the German occupation, she suffers health problems, but even her daughter is not interested in helping her mother...
A divorced single mother romances a young slaughterhouse worker, must to the chagrin of her ex-husband.
Many children live in a poor cottage, the oldest of whom is Ondra. The cottage can no longer support them all, so the father sends his son out into the world to learn a trade. On his journey, Ondra meets an old man, to whom he offers his last bun. The mysterious old man advises him on which path to take and also gives the boy a gift. On his journey, Ondra meets many people and proves his cleverness in each encounter. When he arrives in the city, he looks around the shops and thinks about which trade he could learn. He chooses a goldsmith. He is accepted and is so skilled that his master allows him to make jewelry for the princess, with whom Ondra falls in love. The princess is mute, but clever Ondra is sure to find a way to deal with that.
The hero of the opening story, the Postman Puppet (directed by Zdeněk Troška), works as a postman in the mountains. When his wife is taken to the maternity ward, he goes on his usual hike through the solitudes. Little Libor goes after the father of two girls (Petr Pospíchal), who longs for a son. Meanwhile, the weather on the ridges worsens sharply. An experienced mountaineer and his little friend spend the night in a makeshift shelter... The second episode of Hádanka (directed by Jan Ekl) has a criminal plot. A new father (Vlastimil Hašek) gets drunk with friends in a wine bar and the next day becomes a suspect in a murder. He doesn't remember the critical moments, but his testimony leads to the capture of the real perpetrator... The main character of the final short story True Love (directed by Vladimír Drha) is a frat boy (Pavel Zedníček) who spends whole days in pubs. He gets a harsh lesson from his wife, who refuses to let him see the baby...
Middle-aged Antonin and his friends, the major, now retired, and the canon, are in the river, swimming and philosophizing. Then it starts to rain. It just seems to be that sort of summer. Antonin runs the swimming bath with his portly wife Katherine... A man appears with his horse-drawn caravan. He lays a striped pole across the river and walks over. With a handstand and a magic trick, Ernie the Conjuror invites everyone to that evening's performance... Ernie is a tightrope walker of only modest skill, but with a slim and beautiful assistant, Anna. Antonin speaks to her. The two spend the night in the change room by the river, Antonin massaging her feet all night long. Katherine decides to move into the caravan with Ernie. But now the major and even the canon sense Anna's attractiveness...
Television film with Radošino Naive Theatre and its guests.
A retired soldier, Martin, is returning home after twelve years of service. On the way, he stops in a small Wallachian village, which is ruled by a stingy and ruthless fojt with the help of a sycophantic scoundrel and the local priest. Martin witnesses how he takes the only cow from the widower Kryštof and his five children for a few pennies, how he denies payment of the debt to Jura and Juříček, who then force them to work in his forest for free, how he denies his share of the inheritance to his brother Štěpán, who is in love with the charming Anička. Martin does not want to let all this go by so he decides to help the villagers and punish the fojt. Soon, strange things start happening in the village and the fojt is increasingly afraid that the devil is behind everything. In his place, Martin appears with a cunning plan, the main part of which is a recipe for axe soup.
A twelve-year-old is looking for his biological parents after discovering the fact that he was adopted.
Returning to their ancestral lands, descendants of a formerly aristocratic family hunt for mythical creatures that occupy the nearby wilderness.
A dramatic action film about stuntmen who perform the most dangerous stunts in the film world. One day, however, one of them is struck by a family tragedy in which his son dies. The man cannot overcome this tragedy and ends up in a psychiatric ward. Will he be able to return with the help of his friends?
Biography of Karel Čapek.
Držgrešle and Drždukát are truly miserly characters. With their cunning, deceit, and eloquence, they could probably swindle a calf from a barren cow. They rob simple villagers and fairy-tale creatures of whatever they can. Just think, they even take away the terrible voice of a terrible robber. In the end, however, they meet their match: the lazy Vojta and his sweetheart Anička come up with a way to rob the greedy brothers of the sack in which they keep all the possessions of those who cross their path.
The female employees of the poultry-processing factory find relief from their monotonous work in chatting about weddings and marriages. The very young Zdena (Marta Vancurová), too, dreams about a white veil and an entourage of bridesmaids. On her return home from work, she runs into a peculiar man on an abandoned road who pertinaciously offers to read her palm for a few crowns to buy soup. His augury is rather usual - wealth and poverty, suffering and happiness. Then however, he declares that Zdena must marry exactly on 3 November of that year otherwise she will be unhappy.
After returning home from the army, Vasek (Ladislav Potmesil) has married Bozka (Eva Trejtnarová) and the couple now live at her parents' house. Vasek is unhappy both with his work and with sharing the house with Bozka's parents. He and his friend Ruda (Oldrich Vlach) decide to take a temporary job in Ostrava for a year. Bozka is against this, but Vasek gets his way. Mining is hard work but Vasek gradually adapts to it. He gets homesick from time to time and wants to go back, but his pride always wins out. Once he really does travel back to see Bozka, but he doesn't find her at home.
Engineer Pavel Hnyk is successful at work, but not very happy in his private life. He is approaching his fiftieth birthday and he can't shake the feeling that life is slipping away from him. The most effective medicine for such woes is amorous adventures, and Pavel indulges in them. His wife Alice is a lawyer by profession, so she knows about such cases, and because she is a wise woman, she passes them over in silence. One day, however, a new colleague appears at Pavel's workplace - the charming Slovakian Julie. A friendly relationship soon turns into a love affair, and over time it grows into a headless, destructive passion that cares for nothing and no one...
Viktor Průcha, a successful small-town architect, lives well but knows his comfort rests on compromises. When an elderly man—whose granddaughter was hurt at a school Viktor approved beside a busy road—attacks him and then takes his own life, Viktor abandons his home for a rural studio. There he rediscovers nude photography; his acclaimed exhibition forces him to confront past concessions and choose his future.
During the change of functions in the Fortuna medical ceramics company, Bohouš Fisher, an independent clerk, became deputy director of the company against his will. As a result, he is forced to make even greater compromises than before. He takes part in unnecessary meetings for which he has to raise money from company funds because of his position, or he jocularly solves a "work" accident of two employees who were engaged in love games instead of work. It's not much better in his private life. He would like to do some meaningful work, like building a stove.
Antony is obsessed with the idea of a happy family life, but his young daughter has to be cared for by the parents of his wife, who died in a car accident. Unfortunately, Martha, whom Antony has somewhat recklessly married, has a fundamentally different vision of her future than he does.
Three detective stories from industrial Ostrava. Police search in vain for a missing 16-year-old girl, but succeed in finding a mentally disturbed infant kidnapper. In a case of robbery, at the cost of injuring one of the investigators, they manage to apprehend a lover fleeing with stolen money across the border to Poland...
Czechoslovakia 1918. The newly formed National Assembly has made Stoklasa the administrator of the Kratochvile Castle. Although with no aristocratic background, he is a man of fortune and is trying to buy the castle. To impress his neighbors and the local politicians he invites them to a great hunting party. Uninvited comes a man who claims to be Duke Alexej. Stoklasa believes him to be a hustler. This hustler, however, manages to charm all the women before he leaves.
The Lavicka's, a Czech family from the city, rents a house in the country with the option to buy. However, old Mr Komarek seems reluctant to sell the house as they agreed.
The problematic protagonist is the head designer of a housing association who wants to make a profit at any cost. His unwitting opponent is a bar pianist who accidentally witnesses the murder of a young man and sets out to investigate on his own. An old-world and somewhat comical figure, he poignantly interferes with the cops' work, only to find that he is the one who is credited with catching the perpetrator...
This movie is based on texts of Bohumil Hrabal, world-known Czech prosaic. It's a story (in a form of a mosaic of short episodes and pictures) about the sadness and happiness of inhabitants of Kersko (Kersko is a small woody area full of cottages and roods). These people are both simple and sensitive, they have their own pleasures (e.g. Leli is a collector of cheap, but inutile things) and the greatest delight of all of them is a hunting. Crude poetics of amateur hunting is screened by dreamy pictures of this area. Menzel mixes sentimental lyricism and rough (but not vulgar!) humor and the outcome is the never-ending landscape of continuous life in the proximate nearness of nature. The performances of actors are brilliant. Both Rudolf Hrusinsky as a Franz and Jaromír Hanzlik as a Leli have nonrecurring charm bottomed on a pain and inebriation. Only the music is not perfect: Jiri Sust usually assembled his film music from his older works and in this movie there is many quotations.
Inspired by Jaroslav Durych's novel of the same name. The story of an aging man—sick, exhausted, and twisted by life—who arrives in the borderlands shortly after the end of the war, searching for the man who denounced and destroyed his family during the war. He meets a young German woman who has been stripped of her last shred of human dignity by the revolutionary guards. She is alone, without family or children, hiding from people who come to the border region to loot and enforce their self-proclaimed order. The two grow close, but before they even have a chance to tell each other their names, everything tragically...
Approaches to important life values can vary: while the top athlete who has made it in cycling tries to monetise his talent, his brother cannot devote himself to his beloved sculpture because of his disabled arm and seeks alternative self-fulfilment. Moreover, the two are united - and at the same time divided - by a love affair with the same woman.
A group of children are helping a good spirits who are living in a cave near school.
Matěj Hůrka, a teenage bricklayer's apprentice, a young man who is delicate in matters of love, lives with his grandmother in a country cottage. He struggles with love problems, but waits in vain for some advice as his vivacious grandmother remarries an equally vivacious pensioner. The enterprising eldest generation thus contrasts to some extent with the youth, which is embarrassed.
This production of Ostrava TV Studios was inspired by actual events which occurred in the Ostrava region of Moravia during the 1920s and 1930s. A hedonistic bon vivant of a lawyer named Zajícek (played by Václav Postránecký) came up with a sophisticated finance speculation scheme which exceeded the bounds of law. When discovered it became one of the most closely-followed First Republic scandals.
A psychological drama exploring the notion of the doctor as a moral authority, who within the framework of their everyday work must face questions of life and death. The film is adapted from a novel by Valja Stýblová, in which the author draws upon her personal experiences as a former neurosurgeon. The protagonist of this drama is an ageing professor, based at a Prague neurological clinic, who is haunted by issues concerning his own principles and values, and also by the case of a young patient, Víťa, afflicted with an inoperable tumour.
The theft of a pearl necklace and subsequent murder took place at the Tartaros cabaret. All this could compromise the minister, who is an admirer of the singer Clara. The real culprits must be found as soon as possible...
A fairy tale based on Charles Deulin's story about how dancing was forbidden in the castle, yet every morning there was a pile of worn-out shoes in the princesses' chambers. The king had great trouble with his daughters, Princess Maria, Klara, and Lina. They always got up at noon, complaining of headaches and fatigue, looking pale and emaciated. But at night... The secret of the three princesses is revealed by the basket maker Peter. If Peter had not fallen in love with the youngest of the princesses, no one would ever have found out where she and her two sisters spent their nights, and why it was so difficult to wake them up in the morning. Peter is helped by a fairy who, as it turns out, is the princesses' mother.
The honest and a bit naive director of a variety agency, Jožin Petránek, sits on the qualification committee that judges entertainers and performers of all kinds. The man firmly rejects any favouritism. But at work and at home, he's in for nothing but trouble. The rejected "artists" protest, and Jožin's wife Anna would like to promote her friend's daughter into show business. His new secretary Zuzana starts to seduce him. Petranek finally succumbs to the French chansonnier Madelaine. But Zuzana calls Mrs. Petrankova and she drives her husband away from the table and the bed. Eventually, Jozhin loses his position as director and becomes an ordinary stage recruiter. Now the real showbiz hype is just beginning for him...
The story of six men and one woman who, while exploring the underground part of an old palace, discover that they are trapped here and that there is no return. One can survive here, but is mere survival life? This is the question each of them asks, only the answers differ. A guide who is the epitome of a dictator type takes charge of the group. In a liminal fantasy situation, the characters of other, mutually unknown people are tested over time.
Two crafty swindlers, Berta and Vitouš, settle in a remote Brdy tavern once inhabited by devils and, when a hellish inspection arrives, impersonate true demons by enlisting the hopelessly inept devil apprentice Záprtek. Meanwhile, a rich mistress’s obsession with golden eyes sends wrongly accused servant Anička to hell’s gates, where she and Záprtek team up to tackle the impossible tasks and find unexpected affection in each other.
A TV fairy tale based on a legend from the Haná region. Jan, Margrave of Moravia, falls in love with a simple girl named Marína and marries her. But things start to get complicated at their lavish wedding. The evil fairy Plevelice, in the guise of a beautiful countess, does everything she can to subjugate Jan to her power. His love for Marina fades, and everything is further complicated by war. Marina, who flees the castle to escape her husband's growing anger, gives birth to a boy named Ječmínek. The more she hides with him, the louder the tales of the little heir's goodness and supernatural abilities become. When Jan meets his son, all evil spells disappear, and goodwill and love return to the land of golden fields.
The film tells the exciting life of the great Czech composer Leos Janácek (1854-1928), also known by the thick silver hair that crowned his head and his strong character, which could overcome the adversities of fate.
The story takes place in the Czech-German border region in 1938. The hero Tomás Jakl marries but the marriage is not very lucky and falls apart. His German friend forced him to enter the Nazi party.
The opera lady singer Ema Destinnová is in all her splendor at the American stages. But in Europe there rages war and she decides to return home to Bohemia.
In post-WWII Communist Czechoslovakia, several characters considered bourgeois are sentenced to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation. Among them is a young man who pines for a female convict.
Sonya is the heiress to the riches of a Czech noble family—the Hajns. Petr, a social climber marries her, ignoring some shady goings-on—in particular, an insane uncle who prowls the mansion believing himself invisible, a peccadillo the family indulges. The uncle’s stalking every corner of the house, popping out of cupboards and out from behind curtains slowly takes its toll on the young bride.
Director's memoirs of his childhood in a lively tenement house, in particular one hot summer day in 1949 when all tenants gathered to celebrate the wedding of the landlord's daughter. Small details slowly reveal that the narrator's recollection of the events may not be altogether correct.
A young engineer, Štěpán Pavlík, dreams of becoming a cosmonaut.
A poor couple waits in vain for a child. The desperate man asks hell itself for help, and the devils grant his wish. Nine months later, the couple gives birth to a son named Nesyta. When he grows up, he sets out into the world. He is not afraid of work and offers help wherever he can, but he discourages everyone with his insatiability. Eventually, he enters the service of the devil himself...
The heroes of the small-town story are former friends Standa Stuchlík and Robert Sura, who become arch enemies, and not only because of their classmate Zuzana, whom they both like. While Robert, the dude, has rich parents who spoil him and buy him everything he asks for, Standa has to earn a hard living playing in a rock band, working part-time in the boiler room and constantly defending his hobby against his parents' disdain. His only support is his uncle Edda, also a musician.
The fate of an unlucky director of a dismantled cultural house who temporarily believes in the meaningfulness of his actions, exposed to the pressure of many different difficulties.
A budding teacher comes from Prague to the South Bohemian district town where her fiancé Jakub, a young promising engineer at the local paper mill, lives. Petra is getting to know her new colleagues at school and the children in her new class, and is practicing hard with the Komenium music group, whose members she has known since her studies. She also gets to know Jakub's colleagues and the director of the paper mill, to whose position Jakub would like to be appointed after his retirement. It is this desire for a high position that leads Jakub to behave and act in a way that Petra cannot approve of.
In his feature debut, Dneska přišel nový kluk (A New Boy Started Today) from 1981, the director Vladimír Drha set the tone for a number of Czech films, which critically depicted the state of society from the perspective of young protagonists. Although, Drha primarily found scope for his work in television, he returned to the world of a “working youth” in his second film Mezek (The Mulish Victor, 1985) – albeit following him from the point of view of an educator. NFA.CZ
As the world progresses into the industrial age, a professor studying the "nature of pure matter" is spirited away by a would-be dictator and connived into building a super-bomb, as a young reporter and a girl rescued from the sea attempt to warn him of their mutual kidnapper's intentions to dominate the world with a new and more-deadly-yet weapon.
TV film about the visions of the Slovak inventor of the parachute Štefan Banič.
When he returns to Prague from a stint in the Army, Lada does not seem to fit in anywhere, and he cannot get the hang of the system of deliberately underperforming on the job. His girlfriend tries to keep him in the city with a variety of stratagems, but he eventually takes a job as a truck driver on a dam-building project. He uses the truck to visit his girl on weekends. Ingenuous, he is unaware that the truck is being used for black-market smuggling, and that his girlfriend two-times on him when he cannot arrange to leave on time for his weekend.
After many years, Anka Lomnická, a former countess and emigrant, arrives in Prague. By chance, she finds herself seated next to two characters from a crime story that gradually unfolds around Bubeník, a former guard of political prisoners. With her spontaneity, Anka meets old and new faces, one of whom is Věra, the granddaughter of the former administrator of the Lomnický castle, and her boyfriend, a young detective named Přemek. When Bubeník is found shot dead with a gun in his hand, Přemek is not convinced it was suicide and begins to uncover the past not only of the dead man, but also of his potential father-in-law and his friends, former political prisoners. Gradually, a whole series of people appear whom the ruthless Bubeník hurt in his lifetime...
Prague, Czechoslovakia, during the inter-war period. Jan Dítě, a young and clever waiter who wants to become a millionaire, comes to the conclusion that to achieve his ambitious goal he must be diligent, listen and observe as much as he can, be always discreet and use what he learns to his own advantage; but the turbulent tides of history will continually stand in his way.
A fairy tale based on motifs taken from Josephine tales. Like Josef II, the fictitious emperor Maxmilián often disappears from the castle in disguise in order to find out how his vassals live. On one of these 'trips' he meets a drummer returning home from his stint in the army. They live through various adventures together, meeting bandits as well as human foolishness and perfidiousness which almost leads them to the scaffold.
Francin, manager of a small-town brewery, has a charming wife whose abundant blonde locks are an adornment to the town. Maryska looks ethereal but loves meat and beer, while Francin is an ascetic. The strict members of the brewery board of directors come to audit the accounts, but are diverted from concentrating on Francin's detailed reports by Maryska, who has organized a pig-killing feast and is ably assisting the butcher. When she invites the old curmudgeons on the board to enjoy the fresh pork, they are too happy to agree. Francin doesn't know whether he is going to get a permanent contract. To make things worse his brother Pepin - eccentric, noisy and garrulous - turns up on an indefinite visit.
Young provincial actor Perda, long confined to minor roles, is cast unexpectedly as the lead in a vacuous new play by an ambitious writer. Despite a lackluster script and an audience that largely abandons the performance at intermission, the production proceeds to secure funding. Frustrated by being told to blend in, Perda ultimately decides to assert himself boldly on stage.
The lacking attitude of a conscripted university graduate places him at odds with the power and doctrine of his military superiors. His secret relationship with the wife of a superior officer along with the low discipline of his fellow conscripts only heightens the disrespect towards the new post world war two communist regime. The first privately produced movie in Czech Republic.
Three short stories about the people and folk around the shaft.
At the beginning was the Slovak television series Lekár umierajúceho czasu (Doctor of Dying Time), dedicated to the Rudolphine-era scientist Jan Jesenius. He ended up on the scaffold along with other gentlemen after losing the anti-Habsburg uprising. When director Miloslav Luther conceived the idea of making an abridged version of the footage for cinema, he had to not only rebuild the storyline but also dub it into Czech. However, the result was only an illustrative puzzle, describing the various stages of the hero's turbulent life.